Death List

But when his one true love, April Rose, died at the hands of the Soviet terror machine, Bolan severed all ties with Establishment authority.

Now, after a lengthy lone-wolf struggle and much soul-searching, the Executioner has agreed to enter an “arm’s-length” alliance with his government once more, reserving the right to pursue personal missions in his Everlasting War.

1 (#uaacdfd2a-af3d-531d-b749-56123f97a246)

Whiting, IL

As Mack Bolan, aka the Executioner, reached out to shake the Mafia thug’s hand, the man’s white silk tie bloomed crimson. The soldier dropped to the plush carpet almost before his mind processed why he was doing so, and found himself staring into the dead eyes of the Mafia button man.

Automatic gunfire ripped through the Italian restaurant, which was owned by the Corino crime family, one of Chicago’s most notorious Mafia organizations. That meant that a good portion of the patrons reacted not by screaming for help but by drawing concealed weapons.

Bolan grimaced. He didn’t like what he was about to do, but there was no choice. He rolled himself up and over the corpse, placing the body between him and the south doorway. It was this entrance that was the source of the sudden attack. The Corino family was being hit. It was just the bad fortune of the hitters that Mack Bolan had been caught in the middle.

The Corinos had arranged for “Bolan” to meet them here because it was their home territory. This was supposed to have been a standard meet-and-greet. There being no honor among thieves, the meet was the first of several hurdles Bolan would have to overcome as the Corinos vetted him to make sure he was who he claimed to be.

Of course, he wasn’t.

Bolan drew a pair of Beretta 92-F pistols from the dual shoulder holsters he wore. The weapons had mother-of-pearl grips, which he detested. The pistols, and the custom shoulder harness that bore them, were the personal property of one Vincent Harmon.

* * *

“WHO IS VINCENT HARMON?” Bolan had asked Hal Brognola over the scrambled satellite phone connection two days before.

“He’s one of the most successful assassins in the world, Striker,” the big Fed had explained. From his Justice Department office, the director of the Sensitive Operations Group, based at Stony Man Farm, Virginia, had laid it all out for Bolan while explaining the soldier’s newest mission.

Vincent Harmon was a contract killer who had spent the last eight years on top of the Most Wanted list of more than a dozen international law-enforcement agencies. The list of targets attributed to Harmon included world leaders, captains of industry, underworld figures and various media personalities on the wrong side of Harmon’s employers.

“Why hasn’t the Farm prioritized this guy, if he’s such a big deal?” Bolan asked.

“Harmon has been a ghost,” Brognola replied. “The Farm has been tracking him for some time, but he’s an off-the-grid fanatic. He changes his identity frequently and uses cash and prepaid credit cards whenever possible. The guy likes to wear a fedora and scarf when he’s out in public, and avoids any venue where public surveillance is likely to spot him clearly. His devotion to electronic privacy is a way of life, not just a necessity of his job. It’s like a game to him.”

“How’d they catch him, then?”

“Every man has a weakness,” Brognola said. “Harmon’s is women. He’s fond of high-priced escorts, and he finally hired one whose devotion to privacy wasn’t quite so fanatical. She snapped a photo of him while he was sleeping and posted it to a social media site, to a gallery devoted to her more handsome paramours. Like a trophy. The Farm’s been running web-crawl sweeps for Harmon for years, so the photo was picked up. Harmon’s a man of habit, and this girl was evidently a favorite of his. We staked out her apartment. The next time Harmon booked her, a special operations team took him down.”

“Special ops? For one guy?”

“Harmon’s background is surprisingly similar to your own,” Brognola told him. “He served overseas as part of the war on terror, in a secret, purpose-built special operations group nominally attached to Delta. He’s an expert in small arms, hand-to-hand combat, explosives, and improvised weapons and tactics. He’s also a stone-cold sociopath who’d murder his mother if he thought she was a danger to him.”

“How do we know that?”

“Because he murdered his mother when he thought she was a danger to him,” Brognola told him. “The Pentagon’s not talking because several of the records have been sealed and ‘lost.’ Harmon’s post-military activities have been a huge embarrassment to them and they’d prefer to pretend he doesn’t exist.

“One thing the team at the Farm has been able to confirm is that Harmon was running opium through a network he either built or acquired while overseas. Apparently with that network came contacts that set him up in the murder-for-hire business once some of his more unsavory activities were uncovered. The military gave him a dishonorable discharge and he was headed for a black-site prison for the rest of his life...but he escaped. He’s been popping up on our radar ever since, attached to various high-profile assassinations. But the moment we get a fix on him, he vanishes.”

“And the mother?”

“That was his first step on returning to the United States, we think,” Brognola said. “Vincent Harmon’s mother was found smothered to death in her own bed. Apparently he put a pillow over her face while she slept. He has no other family. His father has been dead for years. I guess he figured she was the one person who might be able to provide law enforcement with insight on his life and his habits, so he eliminated her as part of embarking on his new career.”

Bolan had chosen not to comment on that; it was simply too cold. “What’s the gig, then?” he asked.

“We’ve got a complete dossier on Harmon, which I’m transmitting to your secure phone now. Your task is to travel to Chicago and meet with a courier from the Farm, who’ll bring you Harmon’s personal effects. While Vincent Harmon is a zealot about staying off the grid, the criminals he works with definitely aren’t. We’ve been getting disturbing chatter about a meeting of the minds where the Mafia network is considered. The Mob’s working on a resurgence. Among its rumored plans is a wish list of assassinations to which all of the major families are supposed to have signed off. We believe Harmon has been selected for the series of hits that would take care of the list. The deaths would position the Mob as players for the next twenty years.”

“So you want me to throw a wrench in the works.”

“Exactly,” Brognola agreed. “We have intel that says representatives of the Corino crime family will be meeting with someone they’ll believe to be Harmon. We have a time and location for the meet. We want to send you in as him. You’ll need to take his place, play the role long enough to get the list of targets and then see to it each of those targets is protected. We’ll assign support as possible, coordinating through the Farm, but there’s precious little we know for sure.”

“So I just have to play the Harmon role and brazen out the rest of it.”

“Pretty much. The two of you are the same size, hair color and overall build. You look quite a bit alike. If any of his clients has a better idea what Harmon looks like, and we have no evidence that they do, you can simply play the plastic surgery card.”

While Brognola couldn’t see him, that had made Bolan smile. More than once the Executioner had received a new face. The big Fed was absolutely correct. If anyone among the Corinos claimed Bolan didn’t look like Vincent Harmon, he could admit to having had plastic surgery. He had the scars.

“What about Harmon?” Bolan asked. “What’s he going to be doing while I’m taking his place?”

“Harmon has a long overdue date with a black-ops prison,” Brognola told him. “He is going to officially disappear, which should satisfy all concerned while keeping him out of your way for the duration of your operation.”

“Then I’d better get started. Miles to go before I sleep, as the man said.”

“Good hunting, Striker.”

The conversation with Brognola had been forty-eight hours and several hundred miles ago. In the two days since, Bolan had traveled to Illinois, met the Stony Man courier, briefed himself on the sketchy details available on Harmon and basically tried to get his mind around the role. Role camouflage was something he knew well, but that didn’t make it any easier when he had to try to be, at least for all appearances, the sort of man he had spent his life fighting against. Harmon was a sociopath and a savage, but he was not stupid. It was his intelligence that made the man so dangerous...and that had kept him out of the hands of law enforcement since he’d first taken to contract killing.

Getting the details of the initial meet with the Corinos, and presenting himself as Harmon, had gone off without a hitch. According to the internet chatter intercepted by the Farm, as well as some not-so-legally sifted emails from Corino family members, the meet was to initiate the relationship between Harmon and the Corinos. He had the talent; they had the job that needed to get done. Bolan just had to walk in as Harmon, gain their confidence, and play out the role until he got the information Brognola and the Farm required. It would be relatively simple to safeguard the targets on the list after that. At least, it should have been.

* * *

COULD’VE, SHOULD’VE, WOULD’VE, Bolan thought as gunfire tore into the corpse he was using for a shield.

He ran the events of the last few moments back in his mind. He had walked into the restaurant at the appointed time for the meeting. Immediately, a couple of thick-necked Corino leg-breakers had approached him. They had traded meaningless greetings as he’d reached out to shake the lead thug’s hand. Then the gunfire had started.

From his vantage on the bloodstained carpet, Bolan could see three men at the south entrance. The restaurant was raised from street level, which meant those entering from the south, off the street, had to traverse a half flight of stairs to get to the main dining floor. The gunmen were using the stairwell as cover, spraying the dining area with automatic weapons fire. Bolan could not make out all of the weapons used, but at least one of them was a MAC-10 machine pistol with a large suppressor. The muffled clap of the weapon was unmistakable, as was its thick, black muzzle. Bolan was, without a doubt, outgunned.

Not that it would make a difference.

Bracing his arms against the back of the dead man, Bolan extended both of Vincent Harmon’s Berettas. The pistols, despite their gaudy handles, were finely tuned and well maintained. Harmon was evidently a man who understood good gear, if not good taste.

In Bolan’s pocket was an expensive OTF automatic knife with a blade honed sharp enough to shave hair. That, too, had belonged to Harmon. On Bolan’s belt were Kydex holders for extra magazines. Something Harmon had not carried, but that, for matters of sheer survival, the Executioner had insisted on. It was unlikely anyone would notice or care.

The lead gunman poked his head up again and again, trying to scope out targets. Sporadic fire erupted from the dining level as the Corinos tried to regroup. Nearby, a man was gurgling loudly. It was the second of the two button men who had braced Bolan. The wounded man would not live long, but he would be in pain for every second that he did. He had been shot multiple times, including the throat. The dark arterial blood pooling beneath him told Bolan the whole story.

The Executioner considered sparing the dying Corino a mercy round, but fought the impulse. Mack Bolan might give the man a clean death, but Vincent Harmon would not.

The lead gunman poked his head up once again. This time Bolan was ready. He squeezed the trigger of his right-hand Beretta, putting a 9 mm hollow-point bullet through the shooter’s left eyeball. There was a shout of alarm from another attacker, probably because the dead gunner’s partners were now coated in his blood and brains.

Bolan wasted no time. He dropped the Beretta in his left hand, popped to one knee and snatched a pepper shaker from the nearest table. He tossed it overhand at the south stairs.

“Grenade!” Bolan yelled.